


Deus Ex Human Revolution: Trust is Hard

by zeke (rennergetica)



Category: Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-28
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-13 06:25:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/821078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rennergetica/pseuds/zeke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam is sent overseas following a lead on the attack on Sarif Industries, but finds a piece of another puzzle. Li has to learn to trust a man whose very existence could get her killed. Rated M for sexual scenes and violence in future chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story does not follow Deus Ex canon 100% exactly, so if that bothers you then you have been pre-warned!

**Chapter 1**

The sky was devoid of stars as a fine drizzle seeped from the clouds, soaking everyone and everything into a gloom that was pretty customary for a November night. Li pulled her coat tighter around her body as she trudged along the suspension bridge; the wind whipped around her face on the exposed walkway, and as her hair stuck to her cheeks in dark damp strands she cursed herself for being too lazy to have brought an umbrella. She was pretty certain that the rumble in the distance meant that a storm was on the way.

Rush hour was long past, and so the cars were moving relatively freely along the bridge beside her. Their white lights contrasted starkly with the streetlights above her, highlighting small glimpses of colour against the dingy yellow sodium gloom. The rumbling was getting louder, and Li looked up to try to see where the storm was headed. There were some blinking bright lights in the sky, heading in her direction. It looked almost like a helicopter, but it didn't seem to move in quite the same way.

The explosion shocked Li enough to forget all about the rain in her face, and she stared up at the sky in horror as she saw the aircraft falling through the sky directly towards the bridge, orange flames and black smoke streaming behind it like a tail. The wind was ripping pieces of debris from the craft and sending them hurtling in all directions. The end of the bridge was still tens of metres away, but she had no choice but to move.

Li ran through the other pedestrians who were still too mesmerized by the spectacle to move, screaming for them to do the same. She knew that she didn't have time to look back, but she couldn't help herself anyway. The aircraft was seconds away from hitting the bridge, and all of the cars in its path. As she looked on, a figure jumped from the burning wreckage straight for the bridge, and Li gasped in horror. From the height that they had jumped she figured the unfortunate person was about to splatter their guts along the pavement behind her, but they somehow seemed to glide downward as if they were lighter than air.

Before Li could make sense of how the figure was managing to defy gravity, the wind bore a hunk of debris and smacked it straight into the falling figure. Their graceful glide gave way to a hurtling descent towards the earth, and the debris had sent them off course towards the edge of the bridge. There was nothing that she could do but run in panic as shards of burning metal began spearing the ground around her. She was still several metres from the edge of the bridge when the aircraft finally smacked down.

It still had momentum, and as the burning wreckage scraped and tumbled along the road surface it sent vehicles veering and tumbling in all directions. People were screaming in terror as sparks and fire flew through the air, and the sound of wrenching metal pierced the night. Two cars collided and screeched to a halt to Li's right side, blocking her path and trapping her in an L of twisted wreckage. She turned in a panic and stumbled to the ground, falling onto her backside with a whimper.

The figure hit the road and rolled; the trajectory of the aircraft had meant it was lucky enough to avoid the suspension ropes of the bridge and stay on the road as it came to a stop, but the collision with the debris meant that the falling person wasn't so lucky. Momentum carried them onwards towards the edge of the bridge and Li looked on, wide eyed in horror as they tumbled over the side of the bridge just out of her reach.

Li crawled to her knees and dragged herself to her feet so that she could peer around the wreckage of the cars that had blocked her path. She was lucky not to have been thrown off the bridge along with the other poor soul. A mass of people ran past her towards the crash site, heavy boots resounding on the tarmac and Li ducked back out of sight. Why were soldiers responding to an accident? And how had they gotten there so quickly?

The sound of screeching metal had stopped, and the night was suddenly eerily quiet except for the shouts of the soldiers in the distance. A small sound caught Li's attention, and she crawled towards the edge of the bridge trying to stay out of sight.

He was clinging on to the metal supports just below the road surface of the bridge, but the rain and vehicle pollution had made the material slippery. As Li looked on, the figure lost his grip with one hand and started swaying dangerously in the wind.

"Shit," he said, cursing as he tried to scrabble upwards and failed. He looked up at Li, and she shuffled forwards, ready to brace herself against the walkway handrail so that she could help him up. The light shone against his knuckles and Li recoiled in shock. His hand was jet black against the grey of the bridge, and instead of the softly uneven texture of skin, it had the smooth, satin sheen of metal.

He was augmented. Which meant that he had entered the country illegally and if he was caught he would be arrested. And if Li helped him, she would enjoy the same fate. The UK had not taken kindly to Hugh Darrow's experiments and had broken its long relationship with the US when they refused to see eye to eye on the issue of augmentation. It was banned in the UK, and even web content on the subject was heavily censored. The government had pumped out masses of blatant propaganda about how augmentation was an affront against God, and Li had never even _seen_ a cybernetic limb before, never mind seeing it attached to a person and grasping for her hand.

If she helped him, she would be in real trouble. But if she didn't he was going to fall. Her arms shook as Li laid herself along the pavement, locked her elbow around the handrail and reached her other hand down for the man to grasp. He caught her and held, his grip surprisingly gentle as he eased himself up out of danger.

A shriek of gunfire caused Li to yelp in shock, and as the man cleared the handrail of the bridge he pushed her back out of sight behind the cars, rolling to shield her body with his own. He supported his weight on his arms, his elbows placed either side of her shoulders as he tucked her head into his chest. The stench of burning metal was thick in the air, but with her face pressed against the man's chest Li could smell something soapy, spicy and masculine. His body was hard against her cheek, and for a moment she wondered if it was armour, or if he was simply a human head on top of a completely metal body. The thought seemed ridiculous, but as she had zero prior knowledge of augmentations she had no way of knowing what was likely or even possible.

"Thank you," the man whispered as the gunfire stopped. His voice was husky and slightly raspy as he murmured into her damp hair. He released her head from his hands and she laid it down on the ground so that she could look up at him. At first she thought it was unbelievable that he had managed to hold on to his sunglasses during the fall, but then she realised that they were actually attached to his face. Why anyone would choose to walk around in the dark wearing sunglasses was beyond her, but to have them permanently implanted into your head seemed like a step towards some kind of mental illness.

She couldn't make out his eyes behind the glasses, the reflective surface kept throwing images of her own brown irises and slack-jawed expression back at her. The rain had kept on falling throughout the entire incident, and a drop of water dripped from the end of the man's pointed goatee to hit Li in the chin. His dark hair was as damp as hers, falling over his forehead as he looked down at her, but she could make out a scar that bisected his left eyebrow, and another strangely shaped scar just below his hairline.

Li realised that she had not responded to the man's thanks, and blushed as she realised that she was staring like an idiot. She bit her lip as her mind scrambled to think of something appropriate to say.

"Erm," she mumbled, blinking hard against the rain. "You're welcome. But I am going to be in so much trouble if they see me with you." The man turned his head in the direction of the soldiers and seemed to stare for a moment regardless of the car shaped obstacle obscuring his vision.

"They're starting a sweep, but it'll take them a few minutes to get here," he said, looking back at her. He eased his body free of Li's and raised himself into a crouch, held out his hand to help her up. She stared at it uncertainly, then tentatively placed her fingers into his palm.

He helped her free of the car wreckage, and they stood in the shadows at the edge of the bridge. "You should run," he said softly as he backed further into the darkness, shielding his augmented face from the bemused onlookers. "Thanks again." He turned on his heel and walked away, and Li watched him literally disappear in front of her eyes.

"Oh god," she muttered, shaking as her body drained of adrenaline. She wanted to slump to the ground and sleep, but she knew better than to hang around the scene of her crime. She trotted away, trying her best not to look suspicious, but she inadvertently turned her face from everyone that walked past as she made her getaway.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Adam had a job to do, and that involved hunting down a very secretive computer specialist on the other side of the city. But against his better judgement he found himself following a gut feeling, watching the girl as she made her way home through the near-deserted streets. She was jumping at shadows and glancing around furtively, her long hair whipping around her face each time she moved. He wasn't sure if it was her obvious signs of a guilty conscience that had the two plain clothed SpecOps officers following her, but he guessed this was not going to end well for her. He sank further into the shadows and followed, cautiously closing the distance between himself and the two men. There were more officers sitting watch in a vehicle several metres behind, but Adam would worry about them later.

She had noticed the men following her. As she looked over her shoulder to cross a road, she noticed how they studied her and the girl's eyes widened in alarm. She increased her speed, launching into a trot as she moved blindly, trying to lose the men around a dingy corner. They followed on.

Adam waited for a moment at the edge of the alley, listening for signs of activity. He could hear the girl breathing hard in panic and there were no more footsteps; both she and her tail had stopped dead in their tracks. He glanced around the corner to see that the men were blocking the alley entrance, and the girl had her back up against a locked wire gate. She was trembling as the men showed their badges and told her that they were authorised to take her for questioning.

"What crime do you suspect me of committing?" she asked, but before the men could answer, Adam grabbed each of them by the head and slammed their skulls together with a satisfying smash. They slumped to the ground, one of them emitting a soft "oomph" before falling on top of his comrade in a rather compromising position.

"Little word of advice," Adam whispered, stepping over the entwined bodies and walking up to the girl. "If you're going to make a run for it, don't pick the alley with the blocked exit. It's such a cliché."

She recognised him as soon as the little bit of available street lighting glinted off Adam's sunglasses. "You!" she exclaimed, then scowled at his jibe. "The gate has always been open before; I usually only come along here during the daytime!"

"Well, lucky for you I was still in the neighbourhood," Adam replied. "We should go, I saw a vehicle full of their friends parked down the road." He held out his hand for the girl to take, and she looked at him as if he was a monster.

"You want me to go with you"? she asked, incredulous. She clasped her hands to her elbows as if she was trying to protect herself from his grasp. Her voice sounded too loud in the confined space of the alley. " _You_ led them to _me!_ "

He hadn't, but there was no time to argue. "We don't have time to do this right now," he growled. Stepping forward, Adam locked his hand around one of the girl's wrists and pulled her back out of the alley. She gasped as the cool metal of his synthetic hand touched her skin, and looked about set to scream, until the group of soldiers rounding the corner behind them shocked her into silence.

"Over there!" one of the soldiers exclaimed, aiming his gun in their direction. Adam turned back to the girl and started to run, pulling her alongside him as they fled the scene. He heard a scuffle, then one of the other soldiers shouted that they were told to use non-lethal force. Well, at least that was something, but the armed men were hot on their heels as Adam dragged the girl deeper into the centre of the city. The centre was still buzzing with activity, full of the types of people that preferred the cover of darkness to carry out their transactions. It wasn't Adam's first choice as far as tourist destinations were concerned, but the maze of winding alleys would make it easier to lose their pursuers.

"Stop!" the girl hissed as Adam rounded another corner and started down an alley that turned out to be a dead end. She dug in her heels and dragged him to a standstill. He turned to stare at her, opened his mouth to ask what the hell she thought she was doing, when she answered his question for him. "There's no way I'm going in there. Can't you see where we _are?_ "

He could see exactly what type of place they'd walked into. He didn't care what the other occupants of the alley were up to, as long as it helped the two of them cover their tracks and lose the group of following soldiers. He pulled at the girl's wrist again, but she was not going to move without a fight.

"Look," Adam growled. "It's a shithole, I can see that. But it's either this, or we eventually get caught and hauled off for whatever those SpecOps soldiers have in mind. So if you want to live, you're gonna have to move. I won't let anyone touch you, I promise."

She was practically hyperventilating as Adam tugged her deeper into the alley, but she followed obediently. He eased them right to the back of the alley, and found a tiny unoccupied space for them to stand in. There was only room for one of them against the wall, so Adam squared the girl's shoulders against the brickwork and stood directly in front of her, shielding her face from anyone who cared to look down the alley. His tracking aug told him that the soldiers were seconds away from the alley.

He listened, but it was difficult to make out the movements of the soldiers while surrounded by the animalistic fucking sounds of fifty or so street whores and their johns. The girl's fears had been justified; whatever space that wasn't taken up by people having sex was filled with drug addicts in various states of catatonia. The place was worse than any area of Detroit that he'd worked, and Adam had to stifle a heave of disgust as he noticed the smell of semen and musty bodies hanging heavy in the air.

The girl gasped in fright as the man standing to her left accidentally nudged her arm, and both she and Adam looked over to see a red haired young girl down on her knees in the filth of the alley, deep throating his cock. The guy was big, and as the veiny monster slid in and out of the girl's peachy lips she choked as she tried to catch her breath, eyes wide. He had his hand in the hair at the nape of her neck to hold her prisoner as he swivelled his hips, hammering in and out of her slick throat as he let out a deep groan of pleasure.

"Ohhhhh baby," he grunted, slowing his movements until they were precise and measured. "Suck my balls. I'm going to fucking come!" The prostitute complied immediately, sliding closer so that she could open her mouth and envelope the hairy sack. Her cheeks quivered as she worked her tongue around his testicles and he groaned again, started pumping his dick in his fist so hard he was hitting the girl in the head.

"Oh my god," the girl in front of Adam breathed, and he was snapped back to reality as his augmentations streamed masses of tactical data straight through his infolink. The girl was terrified; her heart rate and skin temperature were elevated and she was trembling against the wall. She was about to scream. As his tracking aug confirmed that the soldiers were still uncomfortably close, Adam had no choice but to act to keep the girl quiet.

He moved closer, clamped his hand over her mouth and tilted her head to the side slightly so that he could whisper directly into her ear. He was leaning a little of his body weight against her so that she couldn't try to escape as he spoke. "Shhhhhh," he said. "I'm sorry honey, I'll get you out of here as soon as I can but right now you need to stay quiet. I won't let anyone hurt you. Can you do that for me?" He thought he had convinced her; her pupils were slightly less dilated and she stopped straining against his weight. But as the john to her left let out a gasp of satisfaction and sprayed his come right into his companion's face, her struggles began again in earnest.

_Shit_. As she heaved in her breath ready to let out a scream, Adam made the only other move available to them within the confined space. He lifted his hand from her mouth, tilted her head back to face him and slid his mouth over hers, silencing her scream with a deep and forceful thrust of his tongue. Her lips were warm and inviting, and as she stood stunned by his actions, Adam slid his body fully against hers and leaned in further as he deepened the kiss.

_Fuck,_ _he_ _was_ _hard._ He wasn't sure if it was the front row seat for the blowjob beside them or the feel of the soft, curvy body beneath him that had caused it, but his cock was straining in his pants so hard it almost hurt as he held the girl pinned beneath him. He hadn't done this for so long he couldn't even remember, and every warm, blood filled part of his body screamed for the moist, hot flesh between her legs. She came to her senses and slammed her palms against his shoulders, using every ounce of her strength to try to get him off her. Eventually she tired herself out, clinging to his shoulders as she let out a tiny whine of fear.

"Hey," Adam murmured between kisses as he came up for air. "I'm sorry, honey. I'm not gonna hurt you, I promise. But the soldiers are about five metres from the top of this alley, and I need to make sure we blend in, just until they go by. Please just don't scream, okay?" She looked up at him, wild eyed, tears flowing down her porcelain cheeks, and bit her lip as she nodded shakily.

* * *

Li's face was burning as she stood jammed between the filthy uneven wall and the hard planes of the augmented man's body. Her tears felt even hotter as they rolled down her cheeks, but she had no more time to notice them before he slid his lips back over her own. She had tried to push him away, but she would have had more luck trying to burrow through the wall instead. His shoulders were solid metal beneath the heavy leather of his coat, and she was no match for his strength. He slid his tongue back into her mouth and she groaned as the hair of his goatee scraped against her face, the sharp sensation a stark contrast against the soft warmth of his tongue.

He slid his hands to her arse and lifted her, locking her legs around his waist and grinding his hips in a similar pose to half of the other men standing in the alley. His cock was hard against her, and Li shuddered as it rolled over her sensitive clit, a wave of heat spreading through her thighs. He was supporting her full weight on one of his arms and he slid his other hand to her cheek, steadying her mouth as he continued to explore. Her body had been tense with fear for so long that she hardly noticed the tremble in her limbs, but she was becoming so tired now that she went limp against him, submitting to whatever he decided to do to her.

After another moment, the man raised his mouth away from Li's and cocked his head to the side, frowning as if he was listening for any further movement from the entrance to the alley. Seeming satisfied with what he found, he slowly lowered Li back to her feet, sliding her skirt back over her thighs as she moved.

"They're gone," he whispered, smoothing her hair out of her eyes as he eased his weight from her body. Cold air hit Li like a slap in the face, and she suddenly realised how much she was shaking. She stared up at him, frowning at the glasses that hid the nuances of his expressions from view. He complied with her unspoken request and retracted his glasses, and Li stared into the green-yellow glow of his eyes, fascinated by the movement of the artificial lenses as they accommodated so that he could focus on her face.

"I'm sorry," the man murmured as he looked down at her. He ground his teeth together, muscles flexing along the length of his strong jawline. "We needed to blend in, but I, uh…" He trailed off, running his hand through the hair at the back of his head. He turned his head to look down the alley, then turned back towards her. "We should go," he said, and snapped his glasses back into place over his eyes.

"Go?" Li echoed. "Go where? They'll know who I am by now, where I live. Where can I possibly go?"

He frowned, she could see the furrow in his brow regardless of the glasses and the dim light. They made their way out of the alley and moved in the opposite direction to the searching soldiers. "I'll fix this," he murmured to Li as they walked. "I promise."


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

**Chapter 3**

He had promised to fix things. But as they crept along the darkened streets, Li started to wonder what exactly that meant, and just how much she should trust her companion. He was obviously heavily augmented; she wasn't hefty by any means, but he had supported her full weight on one arm for ages as if she was nothing. And she didn't want to think about how easily he had slammed the two soldiers' heads together, but her brain helpfully replayed the sickening crunch of skull against skull for her regardless.

The Party had their own agenda as far as banning augmentation was concerned, that much was pretty obvious to everyone. But the sheer number of horror stories they released about it eventually managed to wear most people down into a state of confused, terrified compliance. The whole situation stank, and Li hated being kept in the dark over such a globally important subject. However, the government did green-light certain bits of information for public consumption. They had streamed a broadcast of a woman who had synthetic legs screaming in agony in the final stages of rejection syndrome, along with statistics on the high cost, low availability and addictiveness of the drug needed to combat rejection. The picture they painted gave the impression that augmented people would eventually end up either stealing to feed their addiction, or begging on the streets close to death.

Nobody protested against the ban anymore; or at least nobody got to hear about it. The statistics were probably fiddled to fit the government's purpose, but after seeing that poor woman screaming in pain Li couldn't blame anyone for not questioning the content of the broadcast. And it did make her wary of why anyone would actually choose to risk such a fate for themselves.

She wasn't exactly a people person anyway. So Li was going to find it very hard to trust an augmented foreigner who had entered the country illegally and managed to pretty much destroy her life in the space of a single night. Why should she obediently trot along beside him when he hadn't even told her where they were going? After he basically assaulted her in the murky depths of Wham Bam Alley. It had saved them, but it didn't stop her from being ashamed. Slowing to a stop, Li waited for the man to turn and look at her before she spoke.

"Look," she snapped, embarrassment fuelling the sting in her voice. Her skin was tingling as she thought about what had happened in the alley, and she was mortified as she wondered if he could tell why she was flustered. "How much longer are you going to drag me up and down the city? You said you were going to fix things; how is this going to help?"

He cocked his head to one side and folded his arms as Li spoke. The sleeve of his heavy coat slid part way up his forearm, and Li was shocked to see that his arms were composed of more metal, as well as another material that looked like it was woven. Her surprised reaction embarrassed her further. What else had she expected? That his metal hands ended at human wrists, like a pair of mechanical gloves? She noticed his mouth twitch and the skin around his eyes crinkle; he was amused by her anger.

"There's a couple of things I need to do," he replied, his voice still as husky as she remembered. One thing she had not noticed before though was his American accent, and Li's heart raced in panic. Of all of the augmented people who could have possibly fallen from the sky to ruin her life, it had to be someone from the UK's newest and worst arch enemy.

"What?" Li whispered, voice fading into a croak as she realised he expected her to go along with his plans. "And I have to come with you?" He did not reply, but his meaning was clear enough. "I – " she stammered, folding her arms across her body and hugging herself against the cold. "You – you can't expect me to have to do that! Don't you understand what they'll do to me? My housemate looked up Tai Yong Medical's website for a dare a couple of months ago. She left for work the next day and never arrived at her desk. Nobody has seen her since!"

The man looked unfazed. "Must suck for the rent," he said, and she snorted in anger.

"Don't you get what I'm saying?" she seethed, invading his personal space as she stepped forward in her anger to prod at his chest. "People disappear for typing three words into Google. What do you think they'll do to me when they find out I helped you escape? When they count up how many bodies you have left behind? And you think this is bloody _funny?_ Are you sure they read the instruction manual correctly when they were assembling you?"

Li gasped as the man also stepped closer to her, grabbing the hair at the back of her head and wrenching her upwards so that she had to stare at her own reflection in his dark glasses. His breath fanned her face and his other hand slid down to her waist and held her immobile as he growled down at her. "Yeah baby," he bit out. "My fucking warranty and service manual are all stamped and up to date. Do yourself a favour. Next time you feel like trying to piss me off, why don't you let off steam with someone who isn't capable of tearing every limb from your body. Do you fucking understand _that?_ "

He was obviously furious at what she had said, and Li's body was flooded with a confusing mixture of cold fear and shameful heat as he pulled her towards him. He was a good seven inches taller than her, and from her perspective his shoulders seemed massive as she stood quaking in his shadow. She could feel his body heat radiating towards her despite his heavy coat and body armour.

"I just…" she whimpered, feeling tears stinging her eyes but not daring to lift her hand to wipe them away. "I just wish I'd never…" She didn't finish her sentence, but he seemed to understand what she meant.

"Yeah," he said, voice hard in the darkness. "Shit happens, baby. I said I'd deal with it and I will, but I have something I need to do and it has to come first. Now you can come with me while I finish my fucking job, or if not, feel free to walk away." He released her hair and body from his grip and shoved her until she stumbled backwards.

Li shivered in the cold air, hugging her body once again as she looked down at the ground, unable to meet his blank gaze any longer. She was afraid of him, and with good reason. But the thought of being left to fend for herself with half of SpecOps out for her blood was far worse. She looked back up at him, cursing herself for being so pathetic as she prayed for him to relent. He laughed at her, but there was no humour in his voice.

"Let's go," he growled, grabbing Li's wrist as he stalked onwards. "We're almost there."

* * *

The laser grid across the doorway was blocking their way in. Adam could have hacked the control, but he suspected this would trigger some kind of secondary alarm and alert his target to their presence. He hunted around the side of the building until he found a ventilation access tunnel. He expected the girl to get pissy when he motioned for her to follow him into the grimy enclosed space, but she did as she was told without a sound. After a couple of minutes of scrabbling, the shaft dropped them into a disused hallway.

The place seemed deserted, but Pritchard insisted that there was a heavy power drain coming from a room at the far eastern corner of the building. As they approached the door, Adam considered leaving the girl where she was while he dealt with the scumbag inside, but he didn't trust her enough to let her out of his sight. He swung the door open silently, and stepped into the bluish glow of masses of computer equipment. The stuff was piled high, creating precarious towers of ancient monitors stacked on top of keyboards on top of old style circuit boards. Half of the monitors were plugged in despite being too dusty and inaccessible to be able to use. Their screens were creating the glow which seemed like the only source of illumination within the room.

The mass of equipment was interfering with his tactical augs, and Adam had to rely on basic eyesight and caution as he edged them through the maze of crap. They reached a clearing in the centre of the room roughly ten metres across, where a small figure stood bent over an immaculately tidy workbench.

She looked up as Adam approached, leaving Li standing in the shadow of a tower of iMac G3s which were probably built before she was born. The biochip specialist glanced around furtively as Adam walked towards her, eyes darting into the shadows created by her deranged piles of junk. She had been working on a chip before she spotted him, and she clenched her fist tighter around the sharp metal implement in her hand.

"Quite the collection," Adam said. His voice sounded distorted by the strange acoustics of the room.

"Who sent you here, metal man?" the specialist hissed, eyes still darting around as she fidgeted. Her greasy hair was in disarray and she looked like she hadn't left the room in days. "What do you want?"

"David Sarif," Adam answered simply. "And I want information. About the hacking biochip you put inside the head of a Purity First terrorist."

The woman cackled, gesturing wildly as she focused her eyes on Adam for a moment. "An augment on a Purity First soldier?" she repeated. "That would never happen. Are you sure your Pedot cluster is functioning correctly? I could take a look at it for you – " She lunged at him, stabbing through the air with the tool poised at his head, but Adam was ready for her and twisted the metal from her hand. It dropped to the floor and rolled into the darkness. He grabbed the woman's wrists and held her still as he repeated his demands.

"Stop playing ignorant," he growled. "We traced the chip, we know you made it. We know it allowed a hacker to use the guy as a proxy to cover his own tracks. And when I caught him in the act, he made the guy shoot himself in the damned head. Did the poor bastard know that your chip would allow him to be used like a fucking marionette?"

The woman cackled again, started twitching her limbs against his grip in a grim parody of a puppet. This was going nowhere, she was obviously mentally unstable. He tried one more time to get some useful information out of her. "What's in Hengsha?"

"Hengsha?" she echoed. "Oooh, a few Harvesters, some triad gangs, a multinational augmentation company about to eat David Sarif for breakfast. You'll love it! But better hurry if you want to find your hacker, you're not the only one looking for him."

"I want to know who paid you to do it."

Suddenly she was fully lucid. "You want to know a lot of things, Adam Jensen," she said, laughing at his surprise that she knew his name. "You think I would allow you to seek me out without doing a little bit of my own digging around? Your augmentations are _divine_ ; dissecting them would keep me occupied for months."

"I'm flattered," he spat. "Really. But let's stay on fucking point here. You can either tell me what I need to know, or I can force it out of you."

"Can you?" she asked, eyes narrowing as she smiled slyly. "Tell me, Mr Jensen. What makes you think I would allow that?"

"What you 'allow' doesn't come into it," Adam growled, and she laughed. This time the deranged cackle was gone, replaced with a sinister chuckle.

"You're always a step behind, aren't you? What a shame it will be if you are damaged, but needs must I am afraid. At least let's try to minimise the bullet holes."

Adam sensed movement on the edge of the clearing, and suddenly it was obvious why the biochip specialist had so much interference generating equipment in the room. Six armoured men slid from the shadows, carrying combat rifles which they promptly aimed directly at his head. The woman shrugged from his grip and edged into the shadows.

_Shit._ The soldiers closed on him, obviously looking to settle their siege without having to worry about the very real danger of hitting one of their comrades with a stray bullet. Adam let them almost enter touching range before he made his move.

He grabbed the first man by the arm, drove his own fist upwards into his opponent's elbow until he heard a crunch, then slammed the edge of his forearm into his side before dealing a knockout blow to his jaw. The second man was stunned into motionlessness, so Adam whacked him on the side of the head. Both men fell to the floor in a groaning slump, and he spun around as he felt movement at his back.

Two men had decided to advance on him in unison. He leapt between them, spun around again so that he was directly behind them then punched them both in the backs of their heads. As they stood dazed, he reached down and grabbed each of their ankles and hefted upwards until they slammed back into the floor head first.

Stepping over the bodies, Adam wrenched the fifth man into a dizzying twirl, whacked his head off the side of the workbench, then threw his body straight into the final man, knocking both of them off their feet. The one opponent who was still conscious struggled to free himself from the weight of his groaning comrade as Adam stepped closer, and stamped in his face.

The room fell silent, and Adam glanced around for any further signs of danger. His tracking system was still screwed, but he couldn't see or hear any signs of movement. He stalked to the workbench and yanked a power cable from its socket, hoping it would kill the interference. It worked.

He found his girl hiding behind the iMac monolith where he had left her, eyes wide with shock and trembling in fear. The assault had only lasted about twenty seconds at most, but it probably seemed like longer to her, standing alone in the dark. There was no sign of the biochip specialist, and Adam cursed to himself.

"Hey," he whispered, sliding his arms around the girl's waist and easing her against his body. "It's okay, it's over." She slid her arms upwards and laid her palms against his chest, a shuddering sigh escaping her lips as she pressed her cheek against his shoulder. A groan came from the pile of bodies and she flinched.

"They're not dead?" she asked, surprise clear in her voice.

"They'll sleep it off," he replied, and she looked up, confused. "I don't kill people if I have a choice," he said, and she opened her mouth in a shocked "o". What did she think he was?

Adam slid the girl into his side as they made their way out of the building, and for a moment his 10mm pressed into her thigh. "Why do you even carry a gun when you can do _that?_ " she asked, and he laughed.

"Sometimes it's fun to do shit off TV," he replied. "Like shooting a lock off a door with a single round. And I still want to blow up a car by shooting the fuel tank."

"Why bother with the door when you can probably just punch through the wall?"

"Gotta look after the paint job," he replied, showing her the contrasting colour of his knuckles. For the first time since he'd met her, a smile twitched at the corner of her lips.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

He wanted to take her to _China_ , of all places. Adam had a lead for an address in Hengsha, and he had to follow up on it as quickly as possible. So that meant dragging her along, if he was going to stand any chance of keeping his promise of getting her out of trouble. Li was not convinced that the plan was going to work in her favour; she had never applied for a passport and even if she had one, the Border Agency did not approve visas to countries that allowed augmentation.

So they found themselves creeping along a different but equally unsavoury part of town as they tracked down an address of a local forger. A dismal smudge of grey light was beginning to smear the horizon, and Li's body clock was telling her that she was way past due her bedtime. Her tiredness did nothing to improve her anxious mood, especially when Adam was showing no signs of weariness at all.

The approaching dawn was worrying her. Adam was good at sticking to the shadows and staying out of the way, so in the dark it had been relatively easy to hide his augmentations. But morning was fast approaching, and although the local weather rarely got any better than a sullen drizzle, there would be enough light for Adam's glasses to draw attention. Even if SpecOps hadn't been out to get them, an augmented person could be shot on sight.

"It's getting light," Li murmured as they rounded a corner and started down a narrow alley. Adam glanced at the horizon and nodded.

"We're almost there," he replied. "I'm guessing it will take a while to get the passport and the documents together. We'll lay low until it's dark again, and you can get some sleep."

"I can?" Li said, frowning at Adam's choice of words. "What about you?"

"I've got some things I need to do before we leave," he said, slowing to a halt as he studied the ground of the alley in front of them.

"But what about the daylight?" Li asked. The conversation suddenly seemed a little absurd, as if he was some kind of vampire that would dissolve or even spontaneously combust under the light of the sun.

"It won't be a problem," Adam said, then stepped forward another couple of paces. Li did not follow, so he turned to look at her. She stared in confusion, and he smiled grimly before he spoke again. "The guy we're going to see," he said. "I'm afraid he's down here." Adam crouched onto the ground, pointing at a metal grate beside his feet.

"But that's a sewage pipe," Li replied, feeling her face tighten into a grimace as she realised that they were really going down there.

"Yeah," he agreed. "There's more or less a whole extra town down here, and that's where I need to go. But don't worry, you'll be safe until I get back."

"Safe," she echoed. "I don't want to think about what we're going to smell like by tonight."

Adam lifted the drain cover from its frame and slid it aside. He stuck his head down the hole and looked around, checking that it was empty before he held out his hand to help Li inside. Trying her best to breathe through her mouth, she stepped down onto the slimy ladder and began to descend into the darkness.

* * *

The forger could not get Li into Hengsha. As she had suspected, visas to get into China were absolutely prohibited, but Adam would not be dissuaded so easily. So they were going to make two sets of documents for her; one which said that she was a UK citizen travelling to Canada to get her out of the country, and one which said that she actually was a Canadian citizen so that she would be able to enter China. Canada didn't officially allow augmentation technology, and so the UK government grudgingly allowed travel there, but anyone returning from Canada was thoroughly scanned and searched before they were allowed entry back onto UK soil.

Once they were out of UK airspace, they would discard her British passport and travel straight to Hengsha. It was the fake paper trail and masses of computer records that would be needed to back up their bogus itinerary which was going to take the time. Convincing Immigration Control within several different countries that your imaginary journey had actually taken place was hard. And if they were stopped during any of the random document searches, they would be screwed. It was no wonder that Adam had ended up coming in hot and entering the UK illegally, but he did not want to take such drastic measures with her in tow.

Li spent then next couple of hours being poked, prodded, scanned and fingerprinted by the forger. Adam stayed with her while all of the biometrics were being taken. The room was small, cold and dimly lit, but there was a comfortable sofa that she would be able to nap on until Adam's return.

"Sorry it's taking so long," the forger said, lifting his glasses to rub his beady eyes. "I have to take your biometrics and alter them in opposite directions, just enough so that we have two sets of data. They need to be different enough from each other that they _could_ be different people, but close enough to your real biometrics that you would still fool most scanners."

"Most?" Adam questioned, leaning against the wall with his arms folded as he watched the forger work. Li looked between Adam and the man scanning her retinas, concern furrowing her brow.

"Most is the best you'll ever get," the forger replied. "You're basically trying to pass her off as two different people using her own biometric data. It's more or less impossible, which is why it takes so long." He sighed as the retinal scanner beeped disapprovingly, and lifted the device to Li's eye to start again. "Of course, it would be quicker if you would sit still."

"Sorry," she replied meekly, feeling the same sort of embarrassment she always felt at the optician when a stranger stared straight into her face. The next scan was thankfully successful, and the forger told them that he had all of the biometrics that he needed.

Li spent the next couple of hours napping as the forger worked, and Adam headed off into the shadows of the underground town. She had considered asking what he was up to, but figured she probably didn't want to know.

* * *

Adam stepped into the dimly lit passageways of the sewer and headed towards the centre of the underground town. He did not like the idea of leaving Li alone with the forger, but he had no choice if he was going to be able to pay for the documents. For a moment he wondered whether she would run while he was gone, but it seemed unlikely. There was nowhere safe for her to go; him falling into her life from the wreckage of a burning V-TOL took care of that.

It was weird, though. If they only suspected the girl of having helped an aug, then SpecOps were throwing far more fire-power after finding the girl than he would have expected. The current UK government was pretty fanatical in their hatred of all things related to augmentation, but sending search parties, choppers, APCs and hoards of soldiers after just one girl who was in the wrong place at the wrong time? It didn't add up.

Right now, though, Adam did not have time to think about the SpecOps situation any further. He had a job to do on behalf of one of the drug runner gangs in the upper city. He didn't like doing dirty work for scum, but the money was good and he didn't have the luxury of time to look for something else. His tracking aug warned him of a person standing watch around the next corner, so he bent into a crouch and crept to the edge of the wall before carefully checking the way ahead.

One man stood facing Adam's direction, and he did not look like he would be turning around any time soon. Damn. Backtracking through the maze of shit smeared corridors would take more time than he cared to spend on this mission. He looked at the wall to his back; it was damp and crumbling and would easily give way beneath his fist, but it was close enough that the guard would hear him. The thought of having to eat a Cyberboost bar down here with the stench of ten year old human waste in his nostrils ended that line of thought completely.

Calculating the distance of the guard from his current hiding place, Adam drew his stun gun, rounded the corner and stunned the guard before he had the chance to make a sound. He grabbed the unconscious man by the leg and dragged him into the shadows before checking his pockets. It never failed to amaze him how many people kept a record of important codes and passwords in plain sight; more often than not in a message or email entitled "password". He was beginning to understand why Pritchard subjected all of the employees of Sarif Industries to his regular, sarcasm-fuelled security reminders.

After satisfying himself that the guard was hidden well enough that nobody would stumble across him, Adam crept along the corridor, stopping behind a large crate while another guard walked past oblivious to his presence. It did not take long to find the room where his target was located, but there was a problem.

The entrance to the room was booby trapped with a proximity mine. Adam would not have time to disarm it before the guard came back within sight. Cursing, he backtracked to the crate while he considered his options. As he crouched in the darkness, he noticed a slight glint of metal behind the crate. An access shaft sat directly behind the wooden box. Adam slid it aside and crawled inside the small space, making his way past the proximity mine and entering the target room from a shadowy corner.

Two guards stood inside the room, their backs to Adam as they kept their eyes trained on the door. As he sneaked up behind them, he slowly rose to his full height, grabbed each guard by the head and slammed their heads together. The noise seemed loud in the gloom and for a moment Adam stood motionless, listening hard for any signs that the patrolling guard had heard anything amiss. Nothing happened, so he rifled through the guards' pockets before moving in to hack the computer terminal glowing in the corner of the room.

_Damn._ The password that he had lifted from the first guard was not valid on this computer, so Adam had no choice but to attempt to hack it. It was not a particularly high security device, but there were hundreds of nodes scattered haphazardly through the system and hacking always seemed to give him a headache.

Within another few minutes, he downloaded the info that he needed from the computer and headed back out of the gang controlled territory. All he needed to do now was to find the exchange point, hand over the info and get paid.

* * *

Adam hadn't even seemed concerned as he handed over an obscene amount of money in exchange for the passports and documents that would supposedly allow Li to leave the UK. Her heart was pounding in shock and her hands trembled as they climbed back up the slimy ladder and out into the cool evening air.

"How do we know that they'll work?" she asked, and Adam smiled as he slid the drain cover back into place.

"The guy knows what the consequences would be if they didn't," he replied, and Li wished that she hadn't asked. They walked back towards the centre of the city, sticking to quieter streets in the hope of avoiding SpecOps patrols. After a couple of moments, Adam stopped walking suddenly as he turned his head to listen behind them.

They had been followed after they had left the sewer. Three scrawny men appeared from the depths of the shadows, and Li shrank behind Adam as the attackers all aimed guns at their heads.

"Hand over the passports and no one gets hurt," one of the men spat as they stepped closer. The three men had all circled ahead of them, within Adam's field of vision, and did not appear concerned that they were dangerously close to touching range. Adam gently pushed Li until she took a couple of steps backwards.

"Turn around and walk away," Adam countered. "And I might let you keep all your limbs."

"Thinks he's calling the shots!" the scrawny leader said to his friends, and they sniggered. Adam did not waste any more time. Quick as lightening, his hand snaked out and grasped the gun in the leader's grip, pulling the man closer so that the gun was aimed to the side while he smashed his fist into the scrawny man's nose. He threw his opponent to the ground, the gun falling uselessly beside the unconscious body. As he turned to deal with the other men at his sides, Li sensed movement to their right.

A fourth attacker was advancing on them from the shadows, and Adam was still busy fighting off his remaining two opponents. As the two men slid to the ground beside their leader, the fourth attacker cocked the barrel of his gun right against Adam's temple.

Li moved without thinking. Grabbing the gun, she twirled and slammed her fist into the man's nose, using momentum to help her knock him to the floor. Adam reached into his coat and brought out a device that looked like it might be a weapon, but Li had never seen anything like it. He aimed it at the downed man's head and pulled the trigger, causing sparks of electricity to envelop his body. As Adam turned back towards her, placing the weapon back beneath his coat, Li realised that she was shaking.

"Thanks," he murmured, sliding his hands to Li's shoulders to ensure that she was ok. She tried to smile, but she could feel her eyes welling with tears. "Where did you learn that?"

"I just copied you, I think," Li replied, rubbing her right hand. It was starting to feel very stiff.

"Quick learner," Adam commented, and Li nodded.

"I'm a dancer," she explained. "I've got to be able to pick things up fast. What did you just do?"

"Stun gun," Adam replied. "He'll sleep for a couple of hours, long enough that he won't be bothering us again. Probably wake up with a headache."

"Pretty handy," Li said, wincing as a stabbing pain began coursing through her fingers.

Adam frowned as he studied her, looking down at her hand and staring for a moment. "You've broken your hand," he said, reaching out to lift her aching palm gently.

Panic rose in Li's throat and turned her voice into a high pitched parody of itself. "Of course I haven't!" she insisted. "It's just a bit stiff, I've probably just sprained it." It was a lie, and they both knew it. "Anyway, we aren't exactly going to be able to walk into a hospital around here, are we?" That was true, at least. "It will have to be ok until we get out of here."

Adam did not look convinced, but there was little he could do to argue right now. Ensuring that they had not dropped any of their documents, they turned and headed onwards towards the city.

Li's stomach was rumbling so loudly that Adam would not have needed augmented hearing to be able to hear it. She hadn't eaten all day, and as far as she knew, he hadn't either. She was never a good person to be around when she was hungry. Noticing a noodle bar on a quiet side street to their left, Li slowed to a stop. "We got time to eat before we carry on?" she asked.

Adam looked over, following Li's gaze to the shop. He took a moment to study it before he replied. "Sure. It looks pretty quiet in there."

They entered the shop, and Li sent Adam to the back of the seating area while she ordered and waited for their food. Two bowls of steaming noodles in hand, she returned to Adam and placed the food on the table before sliding into the seat gratefully. It was not until she was snapping her chopsticks apart and digging into her own bowl that it occurred to her to worry whether he could manage the implements with his augmented hands.

Li had already started to blush deep red in embarrassment before she managed to open her mouth to begin an apology. However, she needn't have worried as Adam mimicked her earlier movements and began eating his noodles without any difficulty. She sighed in relief, and he looked up at her, a hint of a grin at his lips.

"They aren't exactly the real thing," he commented. "But they do the job I guess. For most things."

"You don't sound overly pleased with them," Li said, finding it hard to keep her eyes off the soft sheen of Adam's fingers. He shrugged.

"They have their uses. Punching through a wall with an organic hand can get a little messy."

Li frowned as she looked back at Adam's face, trying to somehow fathom what he was thinking from behind his glasses. "But..." she started, then did not know how to finish. "I'm sorry if this is rude, but obviously I haven't had much experience with augmentations before. I know all the stuff the government puts out is probably just propaganda and bullshit, but, well, I kind of got the impression that augmented limbs look pretty clunky and, well, _shit._ But yours, they look a lot more sort of human than I would expect. They aren't exactly typical, are they?"

Adam shook his head. "Top of the fucking line," he replied as he stared at his hand. His voice was dark with anger.

"So," Li went on, pausing for a moment to slurp a noodle and chew on a mushroom. "You're obviously not happy with them? What happened? Is it a really bad case of Buyer's Remorse?"

Adam's hands stilled at Li's question, jaw tightening as he ground his teeth. Li flinched and wished that she had not tried to push the issue further, but there was no turning back now.

"I never asked for this," he spat, turning his free hand palm up and then slowly making a fist with the synthetic digits. "Someone broke into the labs where I work. Bastards killed Megan Reed because of the research she was doing. Killed her, all of her team, and tried to kill me too."

"Oh!" Li replied, shocked by the venom in Adam's voice. "I... I'm so sorry, I shouldn't be so nosey. I just hate being so ignorant about an issue that so obviously important in the rest of the world."

Adam nodded, and settled back into eating his noodles as Li asked another question. "So, did you get the augmentations to save your life?" It had never occurred to her that people might get augmentations for any reason other than vanity.

He grinned again, but there was no humour in the expression. "Some of them, not all. Basically most of my internal organs and one of my arms got minced when I got thrown through a pane of safety glass. My boss decided that I would be more use to him if they also augmented my other arm and both of my legs."

Li choked on her noodle soup at that. "They just cut off healthy limbs?" she asked, and he nodded. "Didn't they need your consent for that?"

"Built into my employment contract," Adam replied. "Sarif could have chopped off my head and transplanted it onto a chihuahua if he had wanted."

"Chuffing hell!" Li exclaimed. "That's pretty brutal. And you're still working for him?"

"For now," Adam agreed. "I need to find the bastards that killed Megan."

"Were you," Li began, worried that she would make Adam angry again. "Were you close?"

It took a moment before Adam replied. "Yeah," he muttered, setting aside his chopsticks and running his hand through his hair. "We were."


	5. Chapter 5

Adam wasn't sure why he had told Li the story behind his augmentations. He didn't like people prying into his life – especially not about _that_ – but he had told her anyway. Maybe he was just sick of her thinking that he was a freak, but there wasn't time to sit around wondering whether she had changed her opinion.

She had gone quiet, and was sitting at the table pushing a leftover noodle around her bowl with her chopsticks. A frown was marring the creamy skin of her forehead whilst she concentrated on separating the noodles into individual strands.

"You know," Adam began, and she looked up to meet his eyes as he talked. "This is a pretty major thing you're about to do. Are you sure you're okay with it?"

Li's frown deepened. "You mean leaving England?" He nodded, and she thought for a moment before continuing. "It's not as if I have much choice now, do I?"

Adam narrowed his eyes behind his glasses. So much for her changing her opinions. He figured she was going to think of him as the bad guy until he managed to sort out the mess somehow, but her next words surprised him.

"But… I'm leaving a corrupt, fanatically religious police state in the midst of the most epic recession since the Euro collapse. I guess it doesn't seem like such a terrible thing if I think about it that way."

She had a point. But still, this was home for her. "We'll get out of Hengsha as soon as I'm done," he replied. "Then we'll find somewhere more permanent for you."

Li nodded absently, then started piling the freshly separated noodles back into a mess. Adam watched her for a while before he spoke again. "What happened?" he asked. "I mean, the UK used to be a major player in Europe. Used to have a good relationship with the US too."

Li looked up again, her mouth twisting in displeasure as she spoke. "I dunno why it happened. It started so slowly I think nobody bothered to take any notice. They started letting schools refuse to teach evolution on the curriculum, then they even started letting them teach Creationism as truth without offering any possible alternative theories.

"Then there was this scientist, Richard Dawkins, who was trying to get people to argue against teaching Creationism as fact. I think they imprisoned him right about the time that the government officially discredited Darwin. So when Hugh Darrow came along, talking about how we could use his new technology to control human evolution... well, it didn't go down well."

"Guess he was lucky to have gotten out when he did," Adam commented, and Li nodded. "It's pretty weird, though. They're so big on religion, but they don't do anything to control places like that alley we hid in. Or the sewers."

Li's frown turned into an amused smile. "What?" she asked. "You haven't come across religion and corruption within the same organisation before?"

"Fair enough," Adam said. Li set down her chopsticks, and a thought suddenly occurred to him. "Hand feeling better?" he asked. She had been using her chopsticks with the hand that she had damaged, without any apparent pain or loss of dexterity at all.

She blushed, and the same panicked expression crossed her face as it had earlier when he noticed she was hurt. Adam's augmentations confirmed that her heart rate increased as she realised what he was talking about.

"I – yeah," she replied, voice suddenly uneven. "It feels a bit better, thanks. I told you it must have just been a sprain."

But the truth was that it had most definitely been broken; his augmented vision had confirmed that, just as it was currently confirming that the damaged bone was now almost completely healed. In any other environment, he would have assumed that she had some kind of health augmentation like his Sentinel, but it would have been pretty much impossible to come by or conceal in this place. As unlikely as it seemed, though, it might go some way towards explaining the sheer number of SpecOps soldiers out looking for Li.

Adam didn't push the issue, and they sat in awkward silence until Li got up to visit the bathroom. Once she was out of earshot, he decided to follow up on his hunch.

"Pritchard?" he sub-vocalised, and waited impatiently for the man to respond.

"What is it now, Jensen?" Pritchard asked. "We can't all be off doing field trips, you know. Some of us have to stay in the office and do the real work."

"Well the next time a field trip opportunity comes up I'll recommend you, Francis. Just remember to pack light; jumping out of flaming V-TOLs isn't exactly a walk in the park."

"Yes, yes, I've already seen it Jensen. A little over dramatic for an entrance, if you're trying to keep a low profile."

"It didn't go entirely to plan," Adam admitted, before getting down to business. "Look, Pritchard, I've ended up picking up this girl along the way - "

"Remind me, will you Jensen," Pritchard snapped. "Why would I be interested in your love life?"

"Just shut up and do your job, Francis," Adam replied, wondering if the sub-vocalised version of his voice was able to convey even a fraction of his annoyance. "She helped me out, so I'm trying to return the favour. But UK SpecOps are after her, and they're putting in far more effort than I would have expected." He did not have time to explain the situation in any greater detail. "I'm sending you a copy of her biometrics that we took to sort a passport; can you find out who she is?"

"Have you considered asking the lady her name? Or was it more of a one night stand sort of deal?"

"Why do you always assume that everything has to involve sex, Pritchard?"

"Ahh, so you're not her type? Perhaps she's not into Robocop?"

Adam felt his teeth clench at that, but he wasn't going to bite. "Just find out who she is, Pritchard, and let me know when you're done."

"And I should be doing this on Sarif Industries' time because...?"

"Because if it isn't done, _Francis,_ " Adam replied. "By the time I get back to Detroit, Sarif Industries will have to hire a new computer security expert."

* * *

Li was quiet after they left the noodle bar. Their conversation about the scientists who had died at Sarif Industries had left her feeling a little _off_ , and she didn't dare try to delve too deeply into that particular part of her mind. She had been so stupid to have allowed Adam to see that she had injured her hand; she was normally so careful around other people. She was going to have to be more careful. It was pretty obvious that his augmented eyes could spot details that any normal person would usually miss.

He hadn't brought it up any further, but she suspected that was because they needed to keep moving rather than him not being concerned. He was, she assumed, talking to someone over some kind of telecoms link, and as he ended the discussion with a sharp huff of his breath, it didn't seem to have gone well.

"Bad news?" she asked, and he raked his fingers through his hair as he looked over at her.

"Flying's a no-go," Adam replied. "The pilot we'd arranged to fly me back out of here can't take a second passenger, and I can't trust anyone else not to turn us in."

"Oh," Li replied, her throat tightening as an uneasy feeling crept over her. Was he going to leave her behind after all?

"We're just gonna have to change our plans a little," he went on. "There's a port terminal in this city, a couple of miles east of here. It'll be easier to get us onto something like a container ship."

"The UK Port Authority won't allow any augmented humans in or out of the country, will they?"

"Not any that they know about," Adam agreed. "So we'll just have to make sure they don't know about us until we get out of UK territory."

"No UK shipping lanes travel to China any more, though," Li said, frowning.

"No," he replied. "But they do go to Canada, and then maybe we can use that passport that we spent all day making."

"Would be rude not to," Li agreed. "With the amount you paid him. What about you though?"

"What about me?"

"You didn't get the sewer guy to make you a passport?"

"I had that all ready before I got here," Adam explained. "But I'd expected to be travelling alone."

"Oh," Li sighed. Suddenly she felt like _she_ was the one who had jumped out of the sky and turned his life upside down. A gust of wind fluttered along the dingy street, and she shivered.

"Come on," he said, squeezing her hand and pulling her in closer to his side to shield her from the wind. "Let's get out of this crazy place."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Author's note* I'm sorry this is taking a while to write. I'm trying not to deviate too far from the main plot of the game, and it's really hard trying to shoehorn a new character into it and not make her stick out like a sore thumb! Why did I even start? ;)
> 
> I do like the story though, and I've got ideas and bits and bobs written that take this past the end of the actual game. So I'm going to keep going, and I hope people still like it. As hard as it is to write, I think it's a good exercise for me in planning. I don't usually write a plan for my stories, I just start writing and see where it takes me. Sometimes that works, but often I end up writing myself into a corner and then think "Oh, I wish I'd done this before", but it's already written and I'm stuck. Since I'm trying to sync up the new story to the right parts of the game, I've had to plan, and I hope it works out.

Li had spent her entire life being cautious; keeping her head down and staying out of the sights of the authorities. She was so nervous of trouble that she had never dared question any of the rules or limitations that The Party continued to impose as their power had spread beyond the realms of managing the State and into the personal lives of its citizens. She wasn't alone, though. Li hadn't been exaggerating when she had told Adam of her friend vanishing after Googling 'Tai Yong Medical', and most never dared be so curious as to risk their own lives in such a frivolous way.

That was the way that everyone lived, as far as she knew. You kept your head down, did your work, and didn't say or do anything that could possibly be misconstrued as Dissension. Anyone who did, didn't do it for long. At least, not long enough to tell the tale. The thought of rebellion was so frightening that it no longer crossed the minds of the average person. So Li almost couldn't believe, as she padded along in the dark beside Adam, that she could feel anything other than terror as they snuck their way through the vast rows of containers within the Port Authority. Her heart was racing and her breath was shallow as he held out his palm to tell her to stop, then flattened his back against the edge of a container and stealthily peered around the corner.

It was hard to believe that someone with such a large frame could be so graceful and so adept at blending in to the shadows, but Adam made it look easy, and as they fluttered unseen past yet another oblivious guard, Li was surprised to feel a thrill run down her spine. Maybe it was the adrenaline that made a smile tug at the corners of her lips, but the thought of escaping from the oppressive hand she had been living under for as long as she could remember was no longer just a crazy notion that she hastily shoved to the back of her mind.

As they reached the doors of another container Adam paused for a moment, staring at the identification label for what felt like an age. He was as still as a statue, and Li realised that he must be accessing data through the information link that he had used to speak to the pilot earlier.

"This is good," Adam said as he finally snapped out of his trance and turned to look at her. "This is a priority container headed for Canada, and it gets offloaded by bots, not people, at three am, Canadian time. Once it's offloaded, we'll be able to waltz right out of there and find something a little more comfortable to take us the rest of the way into China."

"Three am?" Li echoed, incredulous. "I'm assuming that's not three am tomorrow morning, is it?"

The skin at the corner of Adam's eye crinkled as he flinched at her question. "Not quite," he admitted, but he didn't seem likely to admit to any more without further prodding.

"So," she continued. "Three am when? How long are we going to be locked in that box?"

"Four days," he replied, and Li almost choked. "Don't worry," he went on. "I've rigged the manifest and the ship's planning net so that we get placed at the end of a line. We'll be able to open the door, so I can get us some supplies."

"But other than that, we'll be sat in a metal box, in the dark, for four days?"

"It's not so bad," Adam said. "Go back fifteen, twenty years, and we would have been stuck in there for weeks. And that's without even mentioning the pirates."

"Pirates?" Li repeated, her eyes widening as she stared at Adam as if she hoped her eyes could kill with a glance. He smiled in amusement as he turned to unlock the container.

"It's gonna be fine," he said, holding the door open and gesturing for Li to move inside.

"You take me to the most glamorous of places," she sighed, as she stepped past Adam and was swallowed by the gloom.

* * *

She hadn't told him that she was claustrophobic, but as Adam sank down on the floor of the container with his back to the metal wall, spooning Li against his chest, he didn't need his enhanced senses to feel the tremble in her limbs and hear the rapid, shallow rasp of her breathing. The darkness couldn't be helping; he could see fine, but to human eyes the container would be almost oppressively dark. He didn't like using his CASIE aug; he knew how it felt to be manipulated, and he didn't want to do that to other people, but the thought of her spending four days in a state of extended panic almost changed his mind.

He shrugged out of his coat and draped it over Li, laying his hands in her lap to hold the heavy leather in place. Her trembling went down a notch as he felt her snuggle deeper into the warmth.

"You should try and get some sleep," Adam murmured into Li's hair, and she gave a little "mmm" in response.

"You too," she replied, leaning her head back against his shoulder, and he retracted his glasses to keep them out of the way. "Have you even slept at all since you got here?"

He smiled grimly, and she could probably feel the muscles in his jaw move against her face. Sleep never came very easy these days. He _was_ tired, enough that he knew he needed to at least try to rest, but he wasn't going to leave her in this box alone with her fear of the dark. His own demons could wait a little longer to claim him.

"I'm ok," he replied, ignoring the flash of the battery warning on his retinal display. He wanted to at least try to distract her from her panic. "You ever been out of the country before?"

Li shook her head, and the scent of amber and jasmine reached Adam's nose. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, enjoying the experience of smelling something that wasn't metal or gun oil. "No requirement for it in my job," she said, a hint of bitterness in her voice.

"Nobody goes anywhere for vacation?"

She laughed a little at that. "It's not illegal," she said. "Not technically. But if you saw the forms you had to fill out, the so-called _interviews_ and the psych evaluations just to be allowed to _apply_ for a passport, you wouldn't dare. Everyone says they know someone who worked with someone who wanted to go on holiday once, and the story's always the same. They never got to go on holiday. Something comes up in their applications and they got accused of Dissension, or Treason, or something big enough that they disappear. I doubt if any of the stories are true, but you can't blame people for spreading rumours like that."

Adam thought on that for a moment. "Maybe it wasn't the people making up the stories," he ventured, and he felt Li cock her head in surprise. "Governments that survive on fear," he went on. "They keep their power by keeping their citizens afraid, and if the people start to escape, it looks bad. They put out a story like that, it stops people from even trying to get out."

He felt Li shudder faintly against his chest. "That is so creepy that it's probably true," she acknowledged, and sighed softly. "It's scary, what you can make yourself not think about every day."

"Yeah," Adam agreed, looking down at the dull metal sheen of his fingers and grimacing. "Well, what's the alternative? Let them fucking win?"

"I guess, she admitted. "Although it doesn't feel like much of a victory, keeping your head down and running scared all the time."

They were quiet for a while, and for a moment Adam had closed his eyes and allowed his mind to drift dangerously close to sleep. Her soft voice roused him without any of the sudden panic that he had come to expect on waking these days.

"Where are you from?" she asked, wriggling so that she could turn on her side a little. She raised her legs and draped them over his right thigh, and rested her right ear back against his left shoulder. His coat slid down a little, and Adam raised it back in place, holding his arm around Li's shoulders so that she wouldn't fall back if she eventually managed to sleep.

"Detroit," he replied, flexing the muscles in his back so that he could release some of the tension building in his shoulders.

"Didn't they make cars there, once?"

"Yeah," Adam agreed. "Used robots to automate the production, to make it cheaper. Now they're turning the people into the robots." It was his turn to sound bitter this time.

Li looked up at that, and managed to lock her eyes with the glow of his. "Why did you work for them, before the attack? If you don't like augmentation, I mean?"

Adam's mouth twitched in a wry smile. "I used to be in SWAT. It was a good job, good people. But… Some shit went down, and I got kicked off the force. I didn't really have a lot of people banging on my door to hire me. So Megan pulled some strings with her boss. I think she wanted to keep an eye on me, or… something. And Sarif was always big on the 'we're doing it all for the betterment of mankind' speech."

"Right up until he chopped off your limbs, you mean?"

"Hasn't stopped him," Adam replied. "He and Megan, they always said they were doing it for the science. To be able to help people overcome their disabilities and become more than life made them. But if you look at the books, all the big money comes from fucking top secret defence contracts."

Li looked down again, and huddled further underneath Adam's coat. "I'd like to give your boss a piece of my mind," she grumbled. He smiled again.

"That would be quite some show," he murmured. Within another minute, Adam heard Li's breathing slow and deepen into sleep.

Her hair was hanging straight down in a silky curtain across her face, and Adam lifted his hand to smooth the strands out of Li's eyes. He'd touched her face before, back in the alley, and he'd held her hand, but at the time he had so much to think about that he hadn't noticed the texture of her skin. It was smooth and soft, and for a moment Adam stared at his hand in disbelief.

In all the time since the attack and his subsequent augmentation, Adam hadn't let himself entertain the thought of allowing another person to touch him. The sensation that he felt when he touched Li's skin with his damned metal hand was so unbelievably _normal_ that it was almost surreal. Megan would have loved to explain the full interaction between the tactile sensors, his biochip and his brain, and how a metal limb could still allow him to _feel_ even though it was no more alive than his fucking 10mm. She would have drifted into her own little world of science and Sarif's perfect vision of the future –

_Best cut off that train of thought, right now._

Satisfied now that Li was relaxed and entering a deeper sleep, Adam laid his head back and relaxed his body, allowing sleep to drag him down into his nightmares for the first time in days.

* * *

Li hated the dark, and she hated dark, confined spaces even more. Something about them always made her think of her parents, and of the way she knew they must have suffered in their final moments during the Evolution is Progress attack. Adam had left her alone so that he could go in search of some supplies. She knew that he had only been gone a few minutes, but it felt like a lifetime. The walls were closing in and the darkness almost seemed to have substance, and Li yelped in shock as she finally heard the creak of the metal door opening and closing behind Adam.

It was a little eerie, only being able to see the glow of his eyes as he walked towards her, but Li was just grateful that she could see _something_ other than her own hallucinations. When he sat down beside her, she felt the thud of her heard finally calm, and then she noticed the smell of food drift up to her nostrils. Suddenly, it made the few minutes of fear worthwhile, as she felt her stomach rumble in appreciation of finally being able to eat.

They were almost within Canadian waters, Adam had told her, and Li was happy that they would finally be able to escape their prison. He had kept her sane, asking her about England, and talking about Detroit, and she appreciated that, but she would appreciate the open air and a little bit of light even more.

It was funny, though. Regardless of where they both came from and what Adam looked like now, Li was surprised to learn that he had never really liked the idea of augmentation. And she got the impression that he didn't much trust his boss, even though he was stuck working for him if he wanted to find answers about what had really happened during the attack on Sarif Industries.

He wasn't a crazed addict, or a mindless killing machine. He wasn't any of the things that The Party insisted. She couldn't even see why he would be considered to be an affront against God, for anyone who chose to believe in those sorts of things, and it was a huge relief to finally realise that _she didn't have to act like she believed any more_ , if she didn't want to.

As Li sat beside Adam in the dark, munching on her sandwich while they finally escaped the reach of the UK Authorities, she couldn't help but smile. Her old life was in tatters, and she didn't know where they were going to go once Adam was done in Hengsha, or even what she would do if they even reached somewhere safe. It didn't matter. The weight that had been lifted from her shoulders was enough for now.

* * *

The time in Adam's retinal display clicked over to 3am, and the container started to move right on time. It shook and juddered a little while the bots manipulated the metal box off the ship and onto dry land, but Li didn't seem in the least bit concerned. She was itching to escape the confines of their prison, and Adam didn't blame her. After four days with the two of them being shut in such a confined space, the air didn't smell too fresh.

He'd considered contacting Malik to ask her to fly them straight to Hengsha, but that would mean either explaining things to Sarif, or coming up with some kind of cover story, and Adam didn't want to get Malik into trouble with their megalomaniac boss. That, and he wanted to limit the number of people who knew about Li, until he knew exactly why SpecOps had been so determined to find her.

They waited until the bots had moved onto hauling the next row of containers before they made their move. Adam figured it would be best to wait a day before arranging transport out of Canada, in case anyone had been watching for passengers boarding just after a UK shipment had arrived. So they went off in search of a quiet motel where they could wait out the day. A shower and a hot meal wouldn't go amiss, either.

There was only one place in the whole port area that Adam felt comfortable approaching. It looked shady enough that he figured the guy running the place wouldn't be interested in their business, as long as they kept out of his. There was only one room available though, which the guy had said with a sly smile. They were going to have to share. Adam figured that he would sleep on the couch, except there wasn't one in the poky little room. They had a bed, a kitchenette with a coffee machine and a rickety table and two metal chairs, and a dank bathroom with no window and an ancient looking extractor fan. _Li was right when she said that he took her to all the glamorous places_ , he thought to himself.

Adam left Li alone to shower while he took a look around the port, staking out places that he thought might be able to take them on to China the next day. He wanted something quiet, so a passenger ship wasn't on the cards. There were still freight ships who allowed passengers these days, and as a paying customer they'd even get their own cabin facilities and food. It was their best option to be able to lay low in a little more comfort. Satisfied with what he'd found, Adam picked up some fresh clothes for the both of them and headed back to the motel room, relishing the thought of a hot shower.

The welcoming smell of hot coffee hit his nose as soon as Adam opened the door to their room. Figuring that Li must be in the kitchenette, he dropped his coat and gear on his side of the bed, unclasped his body armour and slid it over his head. He groaned in relief as he was able to flex his shoulders fully for the first time in what felt like weeks. Kicking off his boots and socks, he unzipped his pants and headed for the bathroom, retracting his glasses in the steamy room as he grabbed the hem of his shirt in his fingers and started to raise it over his chest.

He didn't register the sound of the shower turning off until it was too late. The screen door opened and Li stepped out of the shower, steam billowing out around her naked and dripping wet form as they both came to a shocked standstill, with only centimetres of hot, damp air between their two bodies.

Li yelped in shock, eyes darting around for a towel before she realised that he was standing between her and the towel rail. Her eyes settled on his stomach, which he had bared when he'd started taking off his shirt. A blush started to darken her already slightly flushed skin and he couldn't tear his eyes away as he followed the path of the water dripping down over her full breasts and onto her narrow waist and flared hips.

_Shit._ Adam felt his body respond immediately, his pants suddenly uncomfortably tight as his cock swelled at the sight of Li. All the parts of his body that weren't directly controlled by his augs screamed at him to shove her back against the wall and finish what he'd started in the alley back in the UK. He considered it for a moment, even though his implants were flashing a warning that the hormone levels in his brain were compromising his thought processes.

_Fuck that,_ he thought to himself as he noticed the increase in Li's breathing, her pulse and her body temperature. He stepped closer, and almost touched his hand to her cheek before he noticed her flinch.

Of course she was breathing hard, it was fucking boiling in this shitty little cave of a bathroom. And her pulse had quickened because he had given her the fright of her life as she had stepped out of the shower. Adam felt his own cheeks darken as he stepped back, mumbling an apology as he grabbed the towel, thrust it into her trembling hands and fled the room.

A few minutes later, Li padded out of the shower and into the bedroom. Adam was standing with his back to her, staring out of the window, but her could see from her reflection that she was draped from chest to thighs in a fluffy white towel. He looked away, feeling every inch a fucking predator as she stood awkwardly, rubbing her toes against the crappy motel carpet.

"I, uh," he started, but didn't know how to explain himself. "I smelled the coffee. Thought you were in the kitchen."

"Oh," Li replied. "I put it on before, so it would be ready after I finished in the shower."

"Yeah," Adam growled, his voice hoarse. He raised his hand to scrub through the hair at his neck, embarrassed. "I figured that, now."

"Well," she said brightly. She was trying to shrug off what had happened and lighten the mood, which somehow made Adam fee worse. "Guess I'd better go check if it's done. The, um. The shower's free, now."

"Great," Adam replied, and almost sprinted for the seclusion of the bathroom as Li walked off into the kitchen, the shortness of the towel emphasising the sway of her hips as she moved.

He was grateful for the iciness of the water as he turned the shower on completely cold and stood shivering beneath it, waiting for the shock of the water to cool his still raging hard-on. She'd _flinched_ away from him, for christ's sake, but his body still wouldn't take the fucking hint. She was a completely natch girl, from a police state that basically demonised augmentation, and he'd dropped in and completely destroyed her life. And that was without even thinking about how he'd essentially forced himself on her in the back of that fucking alley.

Adam turned around in the shower, and had to force his limbs to remain still to avoid the temptation of smashing the full length mirror that threw the taunting image of his augmented body straight back in his face. Of course she'd flinched at him. What else did he fucking expect?


	7. Chapter 7

They'd spent the rest of that night and day in awkward silence interspersed with painful attempts at upbeat conversation on Li's part. Adam was more or less silent, retreating into the kitchenette to spend what seemed to Li to be an excessive amount of time stripping down and cleaning the gun that he normally wore strapped to his thigh. She left him to it eventually, flicking through the unfamiliar Canadian TV channels with only feigned interest.

She'd _flinched_ at him when he'd stepped towards her in the bathroom. He'd given her quite a shock, appearing out of nowhere, and she would have flinched at anyone else in the same circumstances. Adam wouldn't see it that way though, she realised. He wasn't comfortable with his body, and she had reinforced his unease more than once in the brief time that they'd known each other.

She felt shit for doing it; he'd gone out of his way to help her out when he could have just walked away, but she didn't know what she could do or say that wouldn't just make it worse. The daft thing was, it wasn't as if she hadn't thought about the way he'd kissed her, back in the alley. The memory brought a flush to her cheeks, and scorching heat to her thighs. If she hadn't been so alarmed by his sudden appearance, Li would not have objected if he had decided to touch her. But instead she flinched, like an idiot, and now things were horrifically awkward. So she had continued to watch TV while Adam kept cleaning his already sparkly gun, until the rumbling of their stomachs forced them to have to interact.

The motel clearly didn't offer any kind of room service, so the two of them headed out in search of somewhere quiet nearby where they could get a hot meal. They settled on pizza, and as they tucked in to battle their mass of stringy cheese, Li finally managed to get Adam to talk about what he was looking for in Hengsha.

He was going to find a hacker who had been trying to steal from Sarif Industries during a recent attack by Purity First. He'd been given the address by an enemy, who had then tried to blow himself up and take Adam along with him. Li thought the whole thing stank of some kind of set up, but didn't say anything. He knew what he was doing and she figured that he'd considered the possibility of a trap. And anyway, it was nice to finally not have to sit in silence, and she didn't want to mess that up again so soon.

It was late by the time that they returned to their room, and Adam had gone quiet once more. Li resigned herself to more silence, and figured that she may as well try to sleep, to avoid the awkwardness. She retreated into the bathroom to brush her teeth and comb her hair, then went back to the bedroom, assuming that Adam would have returned to his kitchen.

As Li got to her side of the bed, she wriggled out of her skirt and kicked off her shoes. The shirt that Adam had grabbed for her was a little big, and it hung to her thighs. She left it on, and flung back the covers on the bed, about to climb in.

Adam appeared at the doorway to the kitchen, a bottle of what looked like whisky and two tumblers in his hands. He gestured towards her with the bottle, and Li frowned slightly. Her shirt felt too short suddenly as she stood beside the bed, frozen to the spot.

"I was thinking of getting some sleep," she said, and immediately regretted it. The truth was, she wasn't much of a drinker. It wasn't exactly encouraged in a country that was more than 50% teetotal for religious reasons, but Adam wasn't to know that. He set the glasses on his bedside table, unscrewed the cap and poured the golden liquid into both of them, almost to the brim. Just as Li figured that he wasn't looking to take no for an answer, Adam downed both of the drinks in quick succession. Then he poured two more.

He sat down on the bed, his feet still planted on the floor and his back to Li as he picked up one of his freshly filled glasses and swirled the liquid around. Li shuddered; the room was colder than she'd realised and she climbed onto the bed to try to warm herself up. She was kneeling behind him, about to slide her legs under the covers, but Adam was still sitting there, back ramrod straight regardless of the significant amount of alcohol that he had just downed within the space of a minute.

Li desperately wanted to make things right; to somehow break down the wedge that she had forced between them within the bathroom. She had been trying to do just that all night, but words just weren't going to cut it with Adam right now. Maybe with a little bit of liquid courage, she would be able to finally get his attention.

"It's freezing in here," Li observed, but Adam did little more than tilt his head a fraction in acknowledgement of her words. The heating was centrally controlled, so they had no way of warming the room up unless they fancied having an argument with the manager. Somehow, Li didn't think the guy would take much notice. She shuffled forward on her knees and reached out for the glass, just as Adam had started to reach with his own hand. He sensed her closeness and froze, his back tensing even further beneath her hand as she laid a palm on it to steady herself enough to pick up the glass and take a gulp.

It burned, but it warmed her stomach and Li was grateful. She sat still for a moment, waiting for the whisky to somehow guide her, but she could feel the size of the knots in Adam's back. He was not going to relax any time soon. Suddenly, her courage left her completely. She finished the drink and placed the glass back on the table, then shuffled back to her side of the bed. In a few minutes her head would start to spin, she knew, and she wanted to be safely horizontal before that started to happen. She snuggled under the covers, but they did little to stave off the chill of the room. She was shivering as she tried to find a comfortable position in which to sleep, and as she turned onto her side so that her back was to her companion, she felt him stand up and turn off the light.

The bed didn't dip again, so she knew that Adam hadn't sat back down, but his footsteps were silent so Li had no idea where he was. She heard a rustle, and then after another moment she felt him settle the heavy, comforting weight of his coat over her body. It cut the chill from her bones far more effectively than the bedcovers had managed, and she moaned in appreciation.

She felt the bed dip again then, and Adam kicked off his boots before settling his weight on top of the bed beside her. Li turned over, trying to find Adam's eyes in the gloom, but he had his back to her as he laid on top of the covers.

"Adam?" she whispered, reaching out a tentative hand to touch the black gleam of his arm. "Aren't you cold?"

"I'm fine," he grunted, his voice as tense as his body, and Li sighed, withdrawing her hand and trying to get comfortable once more. It was going to feel like a long night.

* * *

Adam had gotten them a place on a freight ship heading for China. Their cabin was compact, but a million times better than the container that had brought them to Canada. It didn't have the space of the motel room, but at least there were two separate bunks. The night they'd spent sharing a bed had been unpleasantly awkward, and so Li had done her best to give Adam space since they had boarded the freighter.

That wasn't true. She wasn't just trying to give him space; she was actively avoiding him, for her own sake as much as his. Their encounter in the bathroom had been replaying itself in her mind, often with rather creative alternate endings, and Li didn't trust herself to look Adam in the eye without her face starting to burn.

She didn't exactly have a lot of experience; if you earned yourself a reputation back home, you would be quietly – and ever so politely – shunned within your parish. So Li had initially been rather traumatised by the scene that had taken place in the alley, and the way that Adam had chosen to handle the situation. As soon as she'd realised he wasn't going to hurt her, though, her body had started to react very differently.

Li wasn't the kind of girl who needed someone to take care of her. Meeting Adam, though, had made her realise just how placid and simpering everyone at home had become, and it was good to have someone around who knew how to take care of himself. His mouth had been gentle on hers, and confident, regardless of his conflicted emotions about his own body, and Li wished she could find a way to restore that self-assurance.

Adam had spent most of his time out of the cabin, either up on deck or lurking around the bowels of the ship; Li had no idea which. Desperate to distract herself, she found a stash of books that a previous occupant must have left, and settled herself down to read one that turned out to be some kind of turn of the century science fiction novel. The idea that most of the inhabitants of the worlds within the book no longer ever experienced death was both fascinating and disturbing, and Li wondered if this was the sort of lifestyle that Adam's boss seemed so intent on bringing to the human race.

After several days of studiously avoiding each other's company during the day, Adam suddenly stuck his head around the cabin door and caught Li's eye.

"Thought you'd like to see this," he said, and gestured for her to follow him out of the cabin. Li got up and followed him up several stairs until the reached the deck of the ship. The midday sun was dazzling after days spent under artificial light, and Li squinted against the glare, initially unable to make out what Adam was pointing at.

An island sat nestled in the middle of the brilliant blue of the sea, and as Li stared she realised that it had two levels to it, both complete with their own vista of buildings and skyscrapers. She had never seen anything like it; it was almost like a scene she could have imagined out of her book and she gasped in amazement. Architecture hadn't really moved forward in the UK for as long as Li could remember, The Party always favouring the traditional over any kind of progress.

"Is that Hengsha?" Li asked, and Adam nodded. "It's beautiful!" she whispered, but he didn't reply. "Don't you think so?"

"I think it's gonna be a bitch trying to find anything in _that_ ," Adam finally admitted, but there was no way that he could dampen her mood right now. She turned towards him and slapped him on the shoulder playfully. "Come off it," she said. "You've got to be interested, at least!" After a moment, she saw his mouth twitch in the faintest hint of a smile. Her mouth widened into a smile of her own.

Hengsha looked exotic and interesting, and most excitingly, _futuristic_ , and Li couldn't wait for the freighter to finally dock.

* * *

Adam followed along patiently as Li wandered the streets of Lower Hengsha while gaping like a tourist. She had never seen so much neon lighting in all her life. It was as if nobody had told China about the global energy crisis, even though The Party had used it as an excuse for everything back home, from the scarcity of petrol to the price of a Greggs pasty.

That wasn't even the half of it, though. There were augmented people walking around all over the place; some more subtle than Adam's modifications, while others had metal arms that wouldn't have looked amiss on one of the loading bots back at the ports. The whole place seemed so obviously _free_ that Li felt a pang of envy at the way that these people lived their lives. She wasn't totally naïve; she knew there were probably downsides that she just hadn't seen yet, but Li was having fun exploring the culture clash that she had been exposed to, and she was disappointed when Adam finally decided it was time to find them a hotel.

* * *

Adam had no trouble finding an entrance into the penthouse apartment; the Belltower guards had been on patrol long enough for boredom to set in, and they were far less vigilant than they should have been. Once he'd sneaked his way into the building, he found an air duct that took him straight into the apartment, out of sight of the guards who were busy examining the room.

The computer was encrypted, but it was a surprisingly easy system to unlock. Adam got the name of the hacker within minutes; it had taken more time to crawl through the air ducts that it did to access the hacker's files.

He should have anticipated the trap, but he had been far too eager to find answers.

At the very moment that Adam had turned away from the computer, he heard a faint computerised beeping. Finally realising his mistake, he threw himself over the remains of the apartment wall, but he couldn't escape the full force of the explosion. He was flung across the floor, sliding through the rubble until his face impacted the opposite wall, and he was suddenly in full view of the Belltower soldiers who had been sweeping the apartment.

One of the soldiers panicked, and blindly opened fire in an arc across the smouldering space. Adam grunted as a bullet pierced his body armour and ripped into his side. He rolled, got to his feet and grabbed the soldier's gun, twisting it out of the man's grip and smacking his head against the wall with a sickening crunch.

Adam didn't stick around long enough to check if the guy was still breathing, or whether his friend was coming to join the party. He dove back into the air duct and dragged himself through it, decided to take the roof to avoid the possibility of any more company until his Sentinel had time to properly patch him up. Once he'd found a set of ladders and made it back down to ground level, he allowed himself the luxury of catching his breath. He'd left Li to her own devices in a tea house back near their hotel, and she would probably have started worrying by now.

* * *

Li had been staring at the leaves in the bottom of her cup for long enough that the drink had gotten cold. It felt like an age since Adam had left, even though he'd promised he'd only be a few minutes. How would she know if something had gone wrong; if he wasn't coming back? Would she sit here all night until her brain finally had to accept the truth? It didn't bear thinking about.

A knock on the window to her left caught her attention, and Li was relieved to see the familiar outline of Adam's coat through the gloom. She shot outside to meet him, her anxiety growing even stronger when she noticed the smudges and scrapes of dried blood across his cheek.

"Adam, what happened?" Li squeaked, stepping closer so that she could rest her fingertips against his cheek. "Are you okay?"

"It's nothing," Adam replied, shifting uneasily beneath Li's scrutiny. "I was in a hurry, and I got stupid. Hacker left a little going away present in his computer; blew it to shit, and I took a nosedive into a wall. Not until after I got the intel, though."

Li was horrified. "You really think it was worth almost getting killed, just so you could find out a man's name?" He shrugged, winced a little as he did, and she looked down.

"Oh my god, did you get shot, too?" She slid her hand from Adam's cheek so that she could rest it on the edge of the damaged armour.

"It went straight through, clean exit wound." He said it as if he fully expected this to calm her panic.

"Jesus, Adam!" Li exclaimed, hot tears stinging her eyes as the tightness in her chest stole her breath away from her. "You've got to be bleeding, we'll need to get you to a hospital!"

"It's fine," he insisted. "it's almost healed. Give my Sentinel another few minutes, there'll hardly even be a scar."

Li couldn't believe how blasé Adam was being over the possibility of his own death. She could hardly breathe at the thought of what could have happened if he had jumped free of the blast a split second later, or if the trajectory of the bullet had been just a little higher. How could he not even _care?_

Li raised her hands and shoved at Adam, growling as she finally found the words to express her rage. "You don't even care that you could have died, do you?" He stepped back a little, grunting in discomfort as she jostled his still healing skin. She shoved him again, harder. "I ruined my entire sodding life to save you, and _this_ is what you go and do?" Adam hissed in pain this time, but Li didn't care. "What do I care if I hurt you, Adam? Your fucking implant will fix it anyway, right? So it doesn't matter, does it?"

As she raised her hands to shove him one more time, Adam grabbed her, slid his arms around her body and held her still. "Hey," he murmured, rubbing her back as he gave her a reassuring squeeze. "I didn't mean that it doesn't matter. But I've gotta find out why it happened, Li, and who was responsible. And I guess… I'm just used to getting banged up, that's all. Doesn't mean I don't appreciate what you did."

Li took a deep breath and tried to steady her nerves. She reached her hands upwards again to cup Adam's jaw, tears finally spilling onto her cheeks as she whispered "You could have bloody _died!_ "

Adam smiled grimly, retracted his glasses as their eyes met and held. "Yeah," he admitted softly. "But I'm fine. We're gonna be okay."

Li raised herself up on her toes and slid her face against his until their noses rubbed together. Adam didn't pull away, and the warmth of his breath sent a shudder down her spine. She didn't give herself time to chicken out; she slid her hands into his hair and pulled, capturing his mouth in a desperate kiss.

Adam didn't move, and Li almost expected him to push her away. Within another instant, though, his hands lowered to pull her hips against his, and his tongue slid inside her mouth, bathing her body in heat as he groaned in satisfaction. His mouth edged along her throat to the sensitive flesh beneath her ear, and Li whined in pleasure as he started to grind his rapidly hardening cock against her clit.

If they carried on like this, they were going to get arrested. Grudgingly, Li slid her palm back to Adam's jaw and eased his mouth from her neck. He looked at her questioningly. "Adam," she whispered, her voice hoarse with arousal. "Take me back to the hotel."

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Author's Note* Is it mean of me to end the chapter here? ;)
> 
> Next part is about 90% written, and is very definitely NSFW all the way through. I am putting in some finishing touches and will post it asap.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Author's note* Okay, people, be warned. Here be smut! If you are offended by such things, please wait for the next chapter ;)

The moments it took to return to their hotel room felt like an eternity. Li clung to Adam's arm as they walked, almost as if she were afraid that he would disappear if she let go even for a second. Finally, they reached their room, and after an age of arguing with the lock mechanism, they were able to slam the door behind them and shuffle inside.

Once they were alone, though, and Li's previous panic had subsided, Adam seemed awkward once more. She wasn't sure if he was regretting his decision to take her back to the hotel, or if he was just worried that she would flinch at him again, but his next move made his feelings clear.

Adam lifted his hand to turn off the light, and Li reached out to stop him. He looked down at her hand covering his own, then slid his gaze back to her face. He was hiding his expression behind his damned glasses.

He was uncomfortable, Li knew. Adam wasn't used to feeling unsure of himself. She figured that it was a good bet that he had never let anyone else close to him since his augmentation, and to be fair, she hadn't exactly been thrilled when she initially realised what he was. How could she blame him for not wanting to let her look at him, when she had flinched at his hand as if he were a monster?

"Adam," she whispered. "Please look at me." He stared without moving for what felt like an age before he complied, retracted his glasses so that his eyes finally met hers. After a moment he looked down, his jaw muscles tightening in discomfort. She stroked her palms along the stubbly skin of his jaw to cup his face. "If you don't want me to look at you then I'm not going to push it, but don't turn the light off because you think _I_ don't want to see. I know… I know I was afraid of you before, but I was only afraid of all the crap The Party had spread about augmentation. And you're not any of the things that they said you were."

He looked back up at her, eyes narrowing as if he was still conflicted. A moment passed, then he lowered his hand from the switch, the light still on.

He slid her coat from her shoulders and let it drop to the floor as he pulled her close, sinking one hand into her hair and the other to her arse as he captured her mouth with his own. She groaned against him, parting her lips to welcome his searching tongue as she slid her arms around his neck and held on tight. She felt him pull her closer until the warm length of his cock was insistent against her clit, and she shuddered in heated pleasure.

As Adam came up for air, Li pulled free of his grasp so that she could slide his coat off his shoulders. The sleek metal of his arms gleamed in the dim light and she stroked her hands from his biceps down to his wrists. The woven structure allowed his arms to move like human muscle, something she had not seen on any other augmented person walking around Hengsha. Adam's arms felt like they were actually part of him, rather than an alien addition.

He shivered, and Li looked up in surprise. She had no idea how well his augmentations could sense touch, and certainly hadn't expected him to react under her fingertips. From the look on his face, she realised that Adam's arms were more sensitive than he had expected, too.

"Can you feel texture?" Li asked, flattening her palms against Adam's biceps and continuing to stroke.

"Mostly, yeah," he murmured, then lifted his hands to interlock his fingers with hers. "Hands are more sensitive, though."

It took Li a moment to work out how to unfasten the body armour, but once she got the hang of it she discarded it quickly, allowing it and the shirt Adam wore underneath to drop to the floor on top of their coats. She had never seen the join between his arms and torso before, and she slid her palms across the skin and metal, feeling muscled flesh moving under her fingertips. A small part of her brain that remembered all of the propaganda had expected to see some evidence of the twisted, scarred skin of rejection syndrome, but Adam looked healthy; as if having his arms replaced with heavily weaponised harbingers of metal death was entirely natural.

He stood still as Li continued to explore his body, and as she slid her hands to his chest she looked up into his eyes. "Is there anything that hurts?" she asked. "Anything you don't want me to touch?" He shook his head, so she set about learning all of the contours of his upper body, including the metal bars that linked his arms and the circular, socket-like objects along his collar-bone. She slid her hands further down, along the ridges of the muscles in his stomach, and the multitude of scars that marred his golden skin. True to his word, the wound that had worried her so much earlier had already faded to a pink circle, and she stroked the pad of her thumb across it gently.

His breathing was fast, and he yanked her close again as he slid his mouth back over hers. Li slid her tongue past Adam's lips this time, exploring the moist depths as he moaned in satisfaction. He slid her skirt over her hips, baring her arse so that he could squeeze the soft flesh. This time it was her turn to moan.

He slid her shirt over her head and dropped it, raising his hand to cup her breast in his palm. Her creamy skin looked white against his hand, and she shuddered as he rolled her nipple between his finger and thumb. His touch was feather-light, determined not to hurt her, but Li wanted more. She whimpered softly, arched her back until her breast pressed harder against his hand, and Adam took the hint. He tightened his grip as he leaned down and captured her other nipple in his mouth, raking his teeth over it then swirling his tongue as he settled down into rhythmic suckling that dragged a desperate whine from Li's lips.

She pulled his head free of her breast and yanked him back upright, sliding her hands back around his neck as she leaned in for another kiss, with the sole intention of wantonly pressing her aching nipples against the hard planes of Adam's chest. He groaned, slid his own arms to Li's back and pulled her in tighter, his hips thrusting to find hers as he broke the kiss, fastening his mouth on the impossibly sensitive skin below her ear. She shuddered against him, heat burning through her as she felt her body start to scream for more.

Li's breath hitched in her throat as she felt Adam's hand lift her skirt out of the way, and his fingers slide between her legs. He wriggled them inside her underwear and stroked, found the slickness of her opening and eased one finger inside her gently. She keened, bucked against his hand, desperate for more, and Adam groaned as he shuddered against her.

"Can you feel that?" she whispered, and he slid his finger deeper inside her as he started to grind his hips against hers.

"Fuck yeah," he growled, his mouth moving to find hers once again as he pulled her against him so tight it almost hurt.

They stumbled towards the bed, Adam stripping Li's skirt and underwear from her hips before easing her down onto her back. She parted her thighs and he kneeled in between, covering her body with his as he propped himself up on his elbow, his other hand stroking along her stomach, hips and thighs.

Li slid her hands to Adam's pants and unfastened them quickly, shoved them a little way down his hips so that she could ease his cock free. She grasped him around the base and glided upwards until she could stroke her thumb over the tip, and Adam grabbed her hand, his whole body stiffening.

"Sorry. It's been a while since I did this," he groaned, pulling her hand free of his body and holding it in his. "You're killing me, here. And I wanna come _inside_ you, baby."

The heat in his voice made her shudder, and Li allowed Adam to pull her hand free of him as he suddenly moved away from her. She whined in confusion, lifting hear head from the pillow to see what he was doing.

"Just relax," he whispered, his voice descending into honey laced gravel as he slid down the bed, parting her thighs so that he could ease his mouth in between. He stroked his tongue along her outer and inner lips, then across her opening before moving upwards to circle her clit. She keened in response, and he groaned against her. He slid two fingers inside her and curled them until they hit the patch of her vaginal wall that made her toes curl. Then he started to suck, and Li felt her body start to burn again, her hands clenching at his hair in desperation as she writhed on the bed beneath him. The slight roughness of his hot tongue combined with the rasp of his beard was driving her further and further into craziness, and her hands tightened in Adam's hair until she heard him hiss in pain.

She couldn't take any more. Li raised her knees and slid her feet flat on the bed so that she had some leverage. She raised her hips against him, almost didn't recognise her own voice as she croaked a desperate "Please, Adam!" down at him. She felt him smile against her, but he did what she wanted. He slid his fingers deeper inside her and tightened his teeth onto her clit, and Li cried out in relief as the pleasure finally reached fever point, and she unwound against him.

Adam waited until Li had come back to her senses before he crawled back up her body to rest his hips against hers. The head of his cock bumped against her opening and Li jerked in response. She lifted her legs and locked them around his hips, pulling him closer as he sank inside her. He hissed as her muscles squeezed against him, closed his eyes and frowned as if he were in pain even as his hips jerked forward, instinctively burying himself deep inside her. Li gasped, threw her hands to his back and scratched hard as her body had to stretch further than it was used to in order to allow him inside.

"Fuck, Li," Adam whispered, wrapping his arm around her head and nuzzling their faces together. He stayed like that for a long moment, and Li turned her head until she found the soft caress of his mouth.

"Are you okay?" she asked, and he groaned in response. He raised his hips, withdrawing from her almost to the tip, and then plunged back inside. Li mewled in pleasure, her back arching against him as liquid heat radiated from her thighs to her head to the tips of her toes. He set a steady rhythm, and Li matched him, rolling her hips to give him better access as he thrust deep inside her. He was moving slowly, still determined not to hurt her, but he was driving Li insane.

"Adam," she whispered, cupping his face as she pulled away just enough so that she could meet his gaze. "Don't hold back, please!"

He stopped moving for a moment, and reached his hand between their bodies so that he could coat his fingers in the moistness from her sex. Then he stroked the wet pads of his fingers over her clit as he started to move within her again, faster and harder. Li cried out, the tension in her body reaching boiling point as Adam hit exactly the right speed and pressure that she needed on her clit to drive her over the edge. She arched against him, eyes rolling, and Adam smiled down at her, leaning down to kiss and nip along her jaw. Her muscles tightened around him as she came, pulsing in tiny delicious ripples that caused her body to shudder against his.

"Jesus," Adam growled, his own body stiffening as he thrust deep insider her one more time, a harsh groan tearing from his throat as he finally came. His mouth found Li's and he stroked his tongue inside as his spent body collapsed on top of her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tight. She could hardly breathe, but she wouldn't have moved him for the world.

* * *

Hours later, Adam couldn't sleep. He had been forced into wakefulness by a shaft of sunlight poking through the window; the hotel was basic, and the curtains didn't even meet in the middle. The sun was weak but it sliced the room in two, falling directly on his face as he had lain on his side with his arm draped possessively over Li's flat stomach. His fingers were less than an inch from her pubic mound, and the thought made his dick stiffen in seconds.

He had to get up. His retinal implants were always a pain after he woke up; dry and scratchy almost as if he'd gone to sleep wearing contacts. The sunlight burned as it irritated his already inflamed tear ducts, but he felt like a dick if he unsheathed his sunglasses in bed. He grudgingly slipped his hand from Li's body and rolled to his feet, snatching at the curtains and dragging them along their rail. Since they were too small, his only option was to leave a smaller gap at either side of the glass which cast a thin beam of light on the floor on either side of the bed. It would do.

Li stirred, but her breath remained deep and even. Adam's raging erection demanded that he wake her, but the clock on the headboard confirmed that she had been sleeping less than three hours. His dick would have to wait.

But it wouldn't. He sank back down onto the bed and slid his hand around Li's waist, and he felt his balls twitch as his dick pulsed against her. He tried rolling away from her onto his other side, but by now his body was determined it needed release. _Fuck._ After more than six months of Adam being too angry with the sight of his augmented body to acknowledge any kind of sexual impulse, his dick was demanding payback.

Getting back to his feet, he padded into the closet which passed as a bathroom, sliding the door closed before flicking on the light. He turned on the water and plunged beneath the pelting stream, thankful for the shower being the one decent thing this hotel room had to offer. He adjusted the temperature until it was as hot as he could stand, hoping that the scalding pain on his back would take his mind off his hard-on.

Adam closed his eyes and dropped his head back, letting the water soak his dark hair and then run over his face. Li smelled of amber and jasmine, and the heat of the water caused the scent to drift up from his own skin. He groaned, turned around in the shower and braced his hands against the walls as he remembered the curve of her mouth, the fullness of her breasts and the flare of her hips. He needed to come so bad that he was grinding his teeth. Adam had gotten into the shower to cool off, not to jack off like a horny teen, and it had given him an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu as he remembered what had happened in the bathroom in Canada. But even when he turned the water so that it was ice cold, his mind kept replaying images of Li's body.

He turned the water back to a comfortable temperature and growled in frustration as he eventually gave in, leaving one hand braced against the wall as the other closed around the shaft of his erection. He slid his fingers to the head of his dick and squeezed gently, a hiss of pleasure escaping his mouth despite Adam sinking his teeth in his lower lip.

He had not asked to be butchered, and he knew damned well that Sarif had chosen to augment far more of his mangled body than had been necessary just to save his life. That being said though, it was at least some consolation that Sarif had elected to spend the big bucks on making him top of the line. His hands weren't human, but they were as close as anyone could get to the real thing with the current tech. As his palms slid against Li's pale skin he could feel her warmth, the slight moistness of perspiration, the fine texture of her skin, and by some miracle of science and biology these sensations still seemed to feed directly to his dick. He had never expected that; he'd expected to spend the rest of his life feeling like he was some kind of puppet trapped within a metal cage. The realisation that he could still touch, and _feel_ it happening, was overwhelming.

She had hesitated taking off his clothes, but only until she was sure he didn't object. Once his body armour was discarded onto the floor she slid her palms straight onto his shoulders, where the flesh of his torso connected with the metal of his arms. He had braced himself, waiting for her to recoil in rejection, but that never happened. He had rolled her nipple between his finger and thumb, and as she moaned in pleasure he remembered being immensely grateful for all of the hours he'd spent working on clockwork parts to hone his fine motor control. All the post-its he had covered with "the quick brown fox..." while he had to relearn the simplest of tasks.

Adam leaned further into the wall of the shower cubicle as he started to stroke his fingers in a tight circle along the shaft of his dick. Heat and pleasure started to build inside him as he remembered the feel of Li's toned but still soft limbs wrapping around him. Her hard nipples poking into his chest as he moved on top of her. Parted thighs drawing him in to the slick, hot flesh of her slit. He had wanted to bury his cock straight inside her and fuck her so hard she couldn't breathe, but he needed to taste her first.

As he remembered the tart sweetness and velvety texture of her vulva against his probing tongue, Adam increased the speed of his strokes along his cock until a bead of pre-come glistened at the engorged tip. He slid a finger over it, spreading the moisture over his glans and moaning in pleasure as he tightened his grip.

She had writhed beneath him, whining in desperation as he held her just on the edge of release until she clawed at the back of his head. He let her come, and her shuddering moans sent an answering wave of heat crashing through his own body. He sank inside her; the hot, wet velvet enveloping and squeezing his cock until he was the one that couldn't breathe. She was so tight that it hurt, and the pain was fucking glorious.

He was tense enough that his old legs would have trembled as Adam stood in the shower, seconds away from coming. Li had locked her legs around his hips and squeezed him deeper inside her, until the head of his dick was bumping the spongy flesh of her cervix. He thrust inside her slow but firm, supporting his own weight so that he could lean his body as close as possible over hers. He savoured every moment, every inch of her heat until his orgasm ripped through him like electricity and fire.

Adam tried his best to stifle his growl of pleasure as he came, his semen spraying over the tiled wall of the shower cubicle in front of him. He shuddered, slowed the movements of his hand to a soothing caress as he cleansed his skin before wiping his come off the tiles in disgust. The hand job had been functional, but there was no way it could compare to the intensely primal satisfaction he'd felt as he had buried his cock balls deep inside of Li, his come spurting hotly over her cervix as she writhed in pleasure beneath him.


End file.
